


The Politics of Security

by prairiecrow



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alien Culture, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-02
Updated: 2011-08-02
Packaged: 2017-10-22 03:41:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/233346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pillow talk about politics, like the course of true love, seldom runs smooth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Politics of Security

**Author's Note:**

> 1) Set in early S3, after "Civil Defense" (3x07). 2) With props to airandangels for the point about lunch dates and nakedness. :) 3) Prequel to "The Currency of Allegiance".

I should know better by now than to get into post-sex conversations with you.

It's not like I have a lot of energy left by the time you're through with me anyway: the Federation medical database makes occasional reference to Cardassian physical stamina, but nothing about _this_ particular aspect of it, and I'm certainly not going to enlighten them. It's our little secret, which I'm pretty sure pleases you inordinately. When you murmur _My beautiful boy!_ against my throat while we're fucking, I always add a footnote in my head: _My beautiful Starfleet officer, so thoroughly compromised!_ Do you really think that one of these nights I'm going to start babbling classified information while you're doing possibly illegal things to various parts of my body? Granted, when you start to tease I feel like I'd scream out almost anything to make you get on with it, but hopefully you realize by now that those exclamations will always consist of _Oh God!_ and _More please!_ and _Will you **fuck** me already?_ with the occasional _You **bastard!**_ thrown in for variety. Not a military secret to be found, I'm afraid.

Not that you've ever stopped trying. Or maybe you're just looking to give me a heart attack. Either way, I'm not seriously complaining.

As for the afterglow… well, talking with you has always been dangerous. It's part of what I love about you. But after being thoroughly shagged (or shagging thoroughly) I have the perfect excuse to curl up against you and wrap an arm around your waist and close my eyes and just let myself drift away into blissful exhaustion without saying a peep. And I should. Any other way lies madness.

I suppose that when it comes to you I've always been a little insane. So here we are again, facing each other across the pillow and engaged in earnest dialogue: rather like our lunch dates, except that we're naked and can touch each other however we like. You have a sneaky habit of playing with my cock when you want to send my arguments off the rails; the first several times you tried that trick it worked admirably, but I'm on to you now, so when your hand slips down and starts to slither I just close my eyes briefly and enjoy the thrill.

"My dear." The glide of your voice might actually be conveying patience this time. "Whatever gave you the notion that providing security to its citizens is the duty of the State?"

"Garak, that's — umph!" A sly squeeze of my balls. Tricksy. I rise above the sensations pulsing through my stiffening penis, which apparently isn't quite finished for the night, and try again. "That's one of the fundamental functions of any government. Look at the history of any planet and you'll…" No, definitely not finished — damn you both. "And you'll see that all of them have well-established militaries from their earliest recorded histories, for the express purpose of defending both their territories and their citizens. If a government doesn't provide adequate safety for the people who support it, it can't function, any more than it can function if it doesn't maintain its borders."

"Tell me," another squeeze followed by a rub, "why do you assume that the two are separate entities in the eyes of the ruling class?"

"I'm not assuming — um! — anything… look, you're making it hard to concentrate, you know."

"You're quite free to return the favour."

"As if I can. You're retracted, in case you hadn't noticed."

"Am I?" A benign smile that might once have fooled me. "Well, I'm sure if you applied yourself —"

I kiss you to shut you up for a brief span of seconds, using my tongue a little, tracing its tip along your lower lip. Of course the second I pull away you're back at it again. "As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted —"

"Before you started fondling me, you mean."

"— _ahem_." I fall silent, managing to confine my grin to a twitch of the lips. You offer me a glance of mild rebuke before continuing. "You seem to regard the property of the State — land, materials, capital — and the citizens of the State as two distinct quantities, to be treated differently."

"I didn't say that. I said —"

"You said precisely that twenty-six days ago, when we had a preliminary conversation along these lines just before you had to run off to the Infirmary to treat Ensign Norris's fractured leg. It's a good thing you'd already gobbled your lunch, otherwise you'd have had no nourishment at all."

I grimace. Not much gets past someone trained in the techniques of eidetic recall.

"In any case," you resume with a gleam in your pale eyes, "I find it curious that you hold the State responsible for providing its members with safety above all else. Why, the very idea contains the seeds of a civilization's destruction! If the citizens of a political body are not willing to rise up and fight — to sacrifice their lives for the good of their society, if need be — then that society is destined to collapse under the slightest external pressure, like a body deprived of a skeleton."

"Jellyfish survive quite nicely," I point out.

The tiny pinch you bestow on the head of my thickening prick is both electrifying and admonishing. "Alas, the same can't be said of metaphors taken too far. You'll notice, however, that jellyfish are generally tiny and ineffectual creatures. The well-run State, supported by the enthusiastic self-sacrifice of it citizens, is an Algorian mammoth: powerful, decisive and virtually unstoppable."

I slide a hand down and start lightly raking my fingernails over the raised scales rimming the slit in your genital sheath. Two can play at that game. "So what you're saying," I say as earnestly as if I'm not trying to get your erection to slide out into my hand, "is that the people are nothing more than property, like land or infrastructure, and that it's the duty of the citizenry of a civilization to do whatever the government asks them to do, including act as cannon fodder, while getting nothing in return?"

"Now who's putting words in whose mouth?" You've assumed an indignant expression. "Of course I didn't say that. It would be patently ridiculous."

"All right, then." I can feel the erectile tissue under the scales rising, pressing them up against my fingers. Excellent. "Are you saying that you, as a Cardassian, never felt that Cardassia was responsible for protecting you?"

I ask the question knowing that I'm stepping onto dangerous ground. You seldom enough give me straight answers, but when it comes to talking about your homeworld and its government you can twist the conversation onto other topics faster than a snake doing a switchback. In fact I half expect you to slide down the bed and take me into your mouth, a tactic of distraction that never fails to have the desired effect.

Instead you narrow your eyes at me, regarding me with an unreadable intensity. Your hand pauses in its ministrations. "My dear Doctor, you have it exactly backwards. _I_ was the one responsible for protecting _Cardassia_."

Meeting your gaze, I pose the next inquiry very carefully. "Was?"

After a moment you look away. You actually look away, and your hand shifts to my hip. Your voice is soft: "In case you haven't noticed, I'm still in exile."

I cease caressing and press the palm of my hand to your sheath, covering the swelling slit with what I hope is comforting warmth. "Garak, I'm only trying to understand. For Humans, part of the reason we accept the rules and regulations of any government is in exchange for protection and security. If Cardassians aren't after those factors, then what do they —"

"Company," you say simply.

I blink. After a moment you look at me again, and your smile is thin and bitter. "We destroyed our world's ecosystem generations ago. Military expansion is not merely a philosophy for us: it's a necessity. No Cardassian can think of their own well-being above the good of Cardassia itself, and no Cardassian is permitted to." You begin to stroke my hip almost absently, your eyes still focussed on my face, your mind obviously light years away. "But no matter what we are ordered to do — no matter how many children we breed for the armies and lose in battle, no matter what deprivations or sacrifices we undergo, no matter if our very lives are the price we're asked to pay — we are _Cardassians_. The State is the eternal family of our species. As a citizen of Cardassia, one is never alone. And that comradeship… that _belonging_ … is worth more than mere safety could ever be."

It takes a couple of seconds for the full impact of that statement to sink in, much more than the bare words themselves convey. If there's one thing I've learned about you it's that you live in the subtext: a phrase uttered two weeks ago, considering in the light of an apparently casual word spoken over today's lunch, combines to unlock deeper levels of meaning. And in this conversation for once the pieces are laid out in clear sequence. You might as well be shaking me by both shoulders and yelling in my face: _I've lost everything — my work, my world, my people — and I am alone, even here with you._

"You're safe with me." The words are out before I can censor them. "You know that, don't you?"

You close your eyes. "Am I?" you ask almost conversationally. I wait, and at last you say: "I'm fairly sure that you wouldn't betray me, not knowingly."

I kiss you again, very gently. "And?"

You sigh. "Julian…"

My heart flutters. I can count on one hand the number of times you've used my given name. This makes four, but it's not enough to make me relent. "And?"

Another sigh, this one impatient and aggrieved. "What do you want from me?"

I wait again. Given enough time, you can never resist filling an empty space with words.

I've silently counted off six seconds when you lean forward and press your forehead to mine, the hard-edged spoon indenting my skin. As far as I can tell it's a Cardassian gesture of affection, although the precise cultural nuances still escape me. "I'm quite certain that you would not permit me to be harmed," you murmur, "if it were within your power to prevent it."

I press my lips softly to your chin, then bite the little scales there, another alien custom I've picked up somewhere along the way. "I would die for you," I say quietly.

You laugh low in your throat. "A lovely sentiment, even if I'm not foolish enough to believe it."

I can't help but smile at your trademark cynicism. "Let's hope things never get to the point where actions speak louder than words."

"Indeed not!" You release my hip to run the backs of curved fingers down my cheek, speaking tenderly: "I'd hate to have you count on me trading my life for yours, only to discover that it was never mine to give."

And then we're kissing again, and you slip into my hand as easily as breathing, and as we sink back into the shared heat that fuses us together for an hour in the darkness I find myself wondering what you would — and wouldn't — do to achieve again what's been stripped away from you, the acceptance of your brethren and the love that promises no refuge, only the glory of never-ending sacrifice.

THE END


End file.
